In 1995, Professor Chou of Princeton University et al. proposed a new technique called nanoimprint lithography (Patent Document 1). Nanoimprint lithography refers to a technique in which a mold having a pattern is brought into contact with a base material having a resin film formed thereon, and while the resin film is pressed, heat or light is applied as an external stimulus to the resin film to form a target pattern in the cured resin film. Nanoimprint lithography has an advantage that enables nano-scale work to be done with ease at low costs in comparison to photolithography and the like conventionally used when manufacturing semiconductor devices.
Therefore, nanoimprint lithography is a technique expected to be applied to manufacturing of semiconductor devices, optodevices, displays, recording media, biochips and the like instead of a photolithography technique, and thus a variety of reports have been made regarding curable compositions for photo nanoimprint lithography which are used in nanoimprint lithography (Patent Documents 2 and 3).
In addition, as a method for mass production of pattern-transferred films with high efficiency in photo nanoimprint lithography, roll-to-roll processing has been proposed. In the roll-to-roll processing conventionally proposed for photo nanoimprint lithography, the prevalent method is to use a flexible film as a base material and to use, as an imprint material, a solvent-free material, in which a solvent is not added in order to suppress changes in the pattern dimensions.
Meanwhile, in technical fields other than photo nanoimprint lithography, there have been reports regarding a method in which sufficient adhesion to films (base materials) is achieved by adding a solvent (Patent Documents 4 and 5).
For photo nanoimprint lithography, a fact has been pointed out that there are cases in which, after imprinting, the imprint material is attached to the mold, which is a metallic mold so that a target pattern shape cannot be obtained. Therefore, there has been a report regarding a technique to obtain the target pattern shape, in which a silicone compound is added to the imprint material as a mold release property improver so as to improve the mold release property (Patent Document 6). In the document, excellent detachability between a coating film and the mold is described as one of causes that develop a favorable imprint property, and, in Examples, the imprint property is evaluated by evaluating the pattern transfer rate of the mold shape through microscopic observation. Furthermore, there is a report regarding a technique in which a silicone compound is added for the purpose of improving the abrasion property of a film surface (Patent Document 7).